Ken Bruen - The Emerald Lie

“Being as you drank it all and more.”

We stood in the grim aftermath of that for a minute until Emily broke the tableau, said,

“You dragged us all the way out here. What’s the big deal?”

Her mother looked beseechingly at me and I moved to go outside but Emily shot me a look. Her mother said,

“I wanted to make amends to you.”

Emily laughed out loud, spat,

“How will you do that? Restore my virginity that Daddy took?”

Phew.

Fuck it. I got the hell out of there. I could hear shouting behind me and started to walk down the road. An articulated lorry came hugely along and more in desperation than seriousness I put out my thumb and

... he stopped.

With my bad leg took me a time to climb up there. Settled in the massive cab and said,

“Thanks a lot.”

The Polish driver said,

“Random acts of kindness.”

Alas, his good deed was fouled by a tape of Black Sabbath. You have not known damnation until you hurl along the motorway, Sabbath roaring in your ears, and a driver eating a thick bagel laden with dripping mayo and tomatoes.

It did save chat so there’s that. He dropped me off at Eyre Square. A wag I knew from Garavan’s watched me climb down, asked,

“New job, Taylor?”

I said,

“With the water charges, we all have to improvise.”

I sat on a bench until a guy approached and sold me a sheet of Xanax. Not exactly the stuff they dealt on The Wire but it does the job. He took the money, said,

“You ever need anything else, here’s my number.”

Might be my imagination but he looked a little like Ozzy Osbourne.

The Grammarian

Oliver Parker Wilson. Now that’s a name. To conjure with. In Galway in the late ’50s, there had been two Protestant families. Two! Count ’em. The Hunters, who manufactured prams, and the Wilsons, who were in exports and simply rich. As Protestant they were, of course, apart and almost like suspicious royalty. Money and Protestant, rarities in a poor town. The Hunters were almost popular in that there was no ill feeling toward them and they did bring employment. The Wilsons were just aloof.

Oliver was the only son and sent to Eton. Where he was schooled in barbarism and grammar. Never fully recovered. He took a first at Cambridge and his first breakdown. He believed words were communicating some special meaning only to him. He was uncomfortable, not with being mad, just with people knowing it, so he began to disguise it with an icy politeness. Then softened that with an ironic wit.

Mostly, he felt an overwhelming anger and did what you do with that — he joined the army. Did well until he shot an NCO and, with family influence, was invalided out. And what to do with the lunatic? Trained as a teacher, always a fine route for madness. During a class for O-level English, grammar began to speak to him again, its rules and structures singing a dark song of transcendence. A pupil mangling intransitive verbs drove him to rage he could barely contain. Found that drowning the pupil brought an ease he’d never known.

And

The knowledge that secrecy was his ally. Cover your tracks. Oddly, he had a small circle of friends, ex-army, and fucked up in other ways. They saw his obsession with language as a hoot.

Indeed.

They called him Park. He began to see himself as Park, an eccentric fellow who was essentially harmless as long as you didn’t disrespect English. And well he may have continued in this low-level field of carnage, not calling attention to himself but dealing with barbarians discreetly.

Until

A colleague at work exclaimed,

“Texting may well replace common usage.”

The sacrilege.

And without due consideration, he had flown at the man. Lost his job and was lucky to escape jail. So, head home. Whoever said you can’t go home again didn’t come from money. You have money, you can go home any fucking time you like.

He did.

Just in time to bury his elderly parents and take over the large house at the back of the golf links. The city had moved on in his absence: had been rich then back to poor again. But being English was no longer a cachet or a problem. So many nationalities now that the St. Patrick’s Day parade was embroiled in rows as to what ethnic group should lead the damn thing. One thing sure: it wasn’t going to be anybody Irish.

Park was now aging, but insanity has its perks. A life without regret keeps you young. He had all his hair, his teeth, and a nervous system attuned to chaos that kept him slender. He dressed in the Anglo fashion of tweeds and Barbour. He would have kept dogs save they instinctively ran a mile from him.

Otherwise, he was pretty much the country gent temporarily in the city. Best of all, he played golf. You want to be accepted by the shakers, play golf. You don’t even have to be very good. Long as you aren’t caught cheating. He had once played with Superintendent Clancy, thus having a solid connection to law enforcement.

Clancy liked to think he was mixing with the aristocracy. If he could just get to meet Bill Clinton, hell, he could run for president.

Park, in his time in mental hospitals, had received shock treatment and found it... get this... refreshing. Wiped the slate clean and, as he came out of it, he could start all over again, hating the abuse of language. Through trial and mostly error, he had managed to set up his own do-it-yourself electric current treatment. Had more than a few close calls but now he could hook up the cables, put the rubber wedge between his teeth, set the timer, and shock the living shit out of his system.

It accounted for the long falloff between kills. Take out a few language abusers, then shock city and he was almost a model citizen for a few months. Back to the golf links and he was as good a citizen as you could hope to meet, long as you minded your language.

Park

Post

 ECT

 Passage.

When the power surged through Park, his whole body shook, the rubber retainer dropped from his mouth, and as the power automatically shut off, he slipped to the floor, convulsing slightly. A few more shudders, then he was still, drool leaking from his mouth.

His mind...

Careering down a completely blank space, a wind howling in his ears, then a pause as roads of utter whiteness began to form. Cascades of letters began to rain down and he opened his mouth as if he could swallow them. The scene metamorphosed to a wood, his father, and a group of men with shotguns and rifles, repeatedly firing and bringing down pheasant, more than they could ever use. A taste of cordite in his mouth, then his father attempting to force the gun into his small hands, shouting at him, “Be a man, kill them.”

No need for Psychology 1 to figure the impact that would have on a sensitive boy. More shooting, carnage, and a mound of brightly torn bodies as the pheasant were piled up. The boy hugging himself, incanting

His mother, in the distance, always distant and whispering gently,

... Park, darling, never forget the beauty of language, and his father at the long dinner table, pieces of bird hanging from his mouth, shouting,

... If you can’t speak properly, you should lie with the carcasses. Then flash-forward to Kosovo; a nominal mission with the UN; and moving down a street, snipers taking off the stragglers, fear in his mouth, and the medic saying,

... We need morphine.

On a small table near his DIY kit, a bottle of gin (Beefeater), a bucket (silver) of ice, and a neatly thin-sliced lemon stood in readiness. A large hand-painted sign warned,